MSNBC hires Mia Farrow's son Ronan for show

The Associated Press

Posted:
10/16/2013 01:48:54 PM MDT

Updated:
10/16/2013 02:47:46 PM MDT

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FILE - In this Sept. 22, 2011 file photo released by the United Nations Foundation, Ronan Farrow, Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for Global Youth Issues, speaks during the Social Good Summit in New York. MSNBC has hired Farrow, the 25-year-old son of Mia Farrow, to host a weekday program at the network starting next year, network chief executive Phil Griffin said Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013.

NEW YORK—A book deal, tabloid attention and now a new television show—it's a busy time in the public eye for 25-year-old Ronan Farrow.

MSNBC announced Wednesday that it had hired Mia Farrow's son, a human rights activist and former Rhodes scholar, to host a weekday program on the left-leaning cable television network starting sometime next year.

MSNBC chief executive Phil Griffin said that Farrow's show "will be a game changer for MSNBC, representing a fresh approach to how we deliver news." He didn't specify what he meant. MSNBC has struggled in the ratings in the post-election period.

Farrow, in a statement, said he was excited to shake up people's expectations for cable news.

"This is a new generation of news show for a new, more engaged generation of viewers," he said. "It's a show about why the news matters to you—and what you can do to be part of the story."

Farrow, a Yale Law School graduate, founded the U.S. State Department's Office of Global Youth Issues during President Barack Obama's first term. On Tuesday, the Penguin Press announced that it would publish a book by Farrow, "Pandora's Box: How American Military Aid Creates America's Enemies," in 2015.

Farrow also made headlines recently when his mother suggested in an interview with Vanity Fair that he could be the son of Frank Sinatra, not Woody Allen, as was long assumed. Allen has called the claim absurd.